Startups – its Good to Get QA On-board Early

One of the biggest challenges faced by most startup software product companies is their aggressive release cycles. With ever changing requirements in order to cater to the needs of their potential clients, QA often takes a back seat, and all activities are channelized to get demo-able features out at the earliest.

From our experience with many of our startup clients, we have noticed that getting the QA team on-board early on has helped them reap some tangible benefits.

Citing what QA brings to the table early on

The requirements get nailed down to the details so that the teams, particularly if they are geographically distributed, work towards the common goal, and QA gets to test what is expected

Furthermore, as features get flushed out, QA gets to validate end user scenarios; early on, to avoid major design changes later in the application.

To ensure good code is being developed that is manageable and scalable and does not break as the product grows, the need for good unit test coverage and code review mechanisms come to the forefront

As releases get ready, the need to have a good deployment process in place comes to focus; leveraging on continuous integration practices to ensure continuous quality control

Overall, QA drives to bring in a process that gets the teams to be more productive

Additionally, as the QA contributions, the following get chalked out

What is the testing strategy to be planned

What are the types of testing – performance, security, api..that need to be planned and when

When to start test automation, and what are the tools to opt for

How will testing align with the development process and release cycles

How to integrate testing with the deployment process

At InApp, this is how we start working as an independent testing partner

At the onset, we bring to the team an experienced lead who will plan out the test strategy keeping in mind all the challenges stated above.

A process for QA is outlined, working in consensus with the development team

The apt tool for test automation is selected with POC (Proof of Concept), if required, to handle frequent UI changes and cross-browser compatibility

TestMinds is a team of highly skilled software testing professionals who love to help customers make their software top-notch. As a division of InApp Inc. the team has been working with several SMBs & Startups across the globe for the past 6 years.